• Deadend [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    10 months ago

    It’s weird that it has taken until this year’s cold days for this to pop up. As its always been a concern of mine.

    • Assian_Candor [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      This is an op I think, partially. There have been a ton of negative stories on EVs— inventory piling up, owners running out of range (like of course you can’t drive your f150 Lightning 600 miles without stopping to charge) etc. not that these aren’t all real issues, but I see a story on it every day which is unusual because there’s other shit happening in the world. Someone is paying a PR firm to plant these stories imo

  • YearOfTheCommieDesktop [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    10 months ago

    this isn’t just a tesla problem unfortunately. It’s an outdoor charging problem. in my area there are a good number of on-street electric car chargers but between the chargers not working reliably in the negative temps, the cables on many chargers getting incredibly stiff in the cold, and the rash of clipped cables (not sure if due to theft for the copper wire or done by the operator at out-of-service/broken chargers), it has seemed pretty rough for the EV owners without at home charging

    • POKEMONGOTOTHEGULAG [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      Not it isn’t. This is an issue of shit engineering. Stuff that sits outside needs to work reliably for a large span of temperatures. I have designed outdoor electronics that are significantly less mission critical than chargers and stress test them generally from -40 to 80°C.

      If stuff stops working, you need to add heating elements or replace non-cooperative components with military-grade components (which costs more). This is the same reason Texas’ wind generators failed during a snowstorm. They saved away the heating elements and it bit them in the ass. Of course a lot of this Tesla crap is designed in California where people think temperatures below freezing is some kind of insignificant edge case scenario.

        • CptKrkIsClmbngThMntn [any]@hexbear.net
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          10 months ago

          I don’t understand this. The guy I know who has a non-Tesla EV bought it in 2014 or 2015, and despite hitting -25°C in winters sometimes the chargers have never had much of an issue, and despite the range predictably dropping in winter the battery life has held up very well for being a 10 year old vehicle.

          • YearOfTheCommieDesktop [they/them]@hexbear.net
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            10 months ago

            does he primarily charge at home or in indoor/covered garages? because that’s 85%+ of EV owners, and it doesn’t have the same issues as fully outdoor public charging stations being used by people who can’t charge at home (such as these chicago tesla owners many of whom probably live in apartments, or the charging stations in my city)

            I definitely think the stations should be engineered better for the weather, it shouldn’t just be expected/accepted, especially since my city and chicago both get this cold pretty often. the vehicles seem to hold up to the cold weather okay, at least the chevy, nissan, and even tesla etc that I see here, but the charging stations haven’t been for whatever reason ( I think primarily the cabling, maybe also connectivity to verify the charges/payment), and if you can’t charge and keep using battery trying to stay warm until it’s flat in the negative temps you end up with the situation in the video.

            • CptKrkIsClmbngThMntn [any]@hexbear.net
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              10 months ago

              He charges at home mostly, completely outdoors, but only level 2 so that probably makes a difference. Still never had an issue with the public level 3s. I wonder if the Canadian systems are just engineered better for cold.

  • FourteenEyes [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    10 months ago

    I mean they are, but this is explicitly a problem with a lack of sufficient weather-proofing on the charging stations that are exclusively outdoors

    • Sinistar [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      You would think that they would have a different design for the charging stations that are set up in areas where it drops below freezing - but these are the exact same outdoor chargers that they install in Southern California.

  • Kalkaline
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    10 months ago

    It sounds like the chargers aren’t working properly which is a PITA when you need to charge. That said it’s funny how this makes the news when EVs have the rare malfunction, but the 4-5 ICE vehicles I saw broken down today didn’t make the news.

      • 7bicycles [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        10 months ago

        Nah, but the tactics are different and most states carbrained their way into allowing EVs on the road before making sure the fire department could deal with it properly.

        There’s subsidiary points here, like the ever present thing about them being banned from parking garages. Parking garages have fire surpression systems designed with ICE cars which may not work so well against EV cars because the necessary throughput of water just isn’t there, which runs you the risk of turning your parking garage into a lithium fired blast furnace should an EV ever catch fire or get torched. You can pretty much see why in the weighing of cost to change the entire surpression system vs. like 10% revenue loss from EV cars latter end get’s the short stick.

        It’s just the same as always I’d argue, a new type of car was rolled out on the streets too early because it has the promise of saving the car and now societally we get to scramble around this bullshit, again, with the added benefit of EV cars enthusiasts seeing some sort of wide spread conspiracy against their climate saving miracle machine

        • Barabas [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          10 months ago

          Firemen don’t really have a way to deal with EV fires at the moment, the way that it is dealt with is pulling the car out of the parking garage and letting it burn.

          A second thing that makes this problem worse is that property owners have a terrible habit of putting charging stations at the back of parking garages, since they don’t want people to park in those spots without charging, meaning that pulling out the car is often impossible.

          • 7bicycles [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            10 months ago

            It’ll be a rocky road to find some way to deal with this honestly. Opponents to EVs don’t care to solve it and would rather ban them, proponents for EV cars don’t want to realize there is actual problems with EV cars that just aren’t solved yet.

      • SkingradGuard [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        10 months ago

        It’s a funny meme that EVs explode, but if you look at the statistics for the USA it goes (from most fires to less): ICE cars, hybrids, then EVs.

        In 2020:

        1. Internal Combustion fires: 199,533
        2. Hybrid (Partially Electric) fires: 16,051
        3. Battery Electric: 52

        idk what the 2023 stats are but it’s probably similar

        • Sinistar [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          10 months ago

          Are these proportional to number of registered cars, number of miles driven, or just absolute numbers? I’ve had a hard time finding actually useful data in the past when I’ve tried to look it up.

        • Tomboys_are_Cute [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          10 months ago

          Its not really a funny meme, EV car fires are impossible to firefight. As soon as it starts the car is toast, that shit is going to burn and its going to burn hotter than any ICE fire. Its a class D fire so the only real way to extinguish it is smothering with dry powder (sand) and creating a glass vacuum around it which is fine for a bike battery but impractical for car.

  • Dr_Gabriel_Aby [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    10 months ago

    I personally know people who get contracts to set up EV charging stations. They are pickup driving Chuds who literally borrow a license of a guy and none of them have any advance schooling. They hire undocumented to do all the labor.

    Americas issue is the entire nation has been hollowed out.